


Piz·za | \ ˈpēt-sə\ "A round of flattened bread dough spread with a savory mixture..." (Merriam Webster)

by GenExHexed



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life, Warped Tour 2005
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29290689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenExHexed/pseuds/GenExHexed
Summary: It's been a long day performing. Pete is eager to relax and enjoy a meal shared with his lead singer and some of the guys from MyChem. But then the gauntlet is thrown...
Relationships: Mikey Way/Pete Wentz, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Piz·za | \ ˈpēt-sə\ "A round of flattened bread dough spread with a savory mixture..." (Merriam Webster)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! First posted fic. This idea grew from when I told my best friend, "Frank is to Jersey as Patrick is to Chicago." Things just bubbled up from there...

Five tired boys, squashed into the circular booth in the back of an aging pizza joint; the only one they had found still open on this god-forsaken stretch of 6-Mile. It had been an exhausting day playing the Silverdome, but afterwards Pete had found himself restless, hungry, and unable to settle on his bus. When word spread among the caravan of a delay in hitting the road (the buses for Underoath and the ironically apt Another Damned Disappointment wouldn’t start), Pete was up and moving. He batted his eyes at one of the tech girls who had helped his band disassemble after their performance earlier, and cajoled her into letting him borrow her battered Cherokee for a pizza run into the city. Unwilling to go alone, he badgered Patrick, and stopped outside MyChem’s bus as well, shyly asking Mikey if he’d come along. The response was alarmingly enthusiastic, and he was bemused to suddenly find himself ferrying three-fifths of My Chemical Romance along with his lead singer into Detroit with himself. Now Patrick, Frank, and Ray scanned the menus while Pete built towers of the sugar packets, and Mikey flipped with interest through the offerings of the tabletop juke box. Pete already knew what he’d order, so he was the one to see it begin.

“Fucking hope they have Chicago-style, man. I’m tired, I’m starving; I need real pizza to bring me back to life,” Patrick murmured absently. Pete knew his best friend was simply thinking out loud, probably not even aware he had spoken. But he watched Frank’s head come up; Mikey ceased idly flipping through song choices, and Ray’s wide eyes peeked up from the top of the menu.

“Ohhhh, shit.” Ray’s high tenor was wary, and both his and Mikey’s eyes cut, in eerie synchronicity, over to Frank’s seat. Iero, meanwhile, set his menu down with great deliberation, and folded his hands atop the laminated sheets. His skeleton gloves contrasted oddly with his pale fingers (and how the fuck he could wear anything extra on this stifling July night was way beyond Pete).

“So. What exactly makes Chicago-style _real_ , Stump?” Frank’s eyes had a spark of malevolence, only partially belied by his light tone. Patrick, engrossed in the menu listings of toppings, failed to take notice, and launched happily into one of his favorite subjects (barring music).

“Oh. Oh God. I could go on for hours.” (He could, Pete knew from experience.) You start with the crust, man. So fucking buttery, and never underdone, always crispy. The cheese, then—Chicago knows to put the cheese as the base layer, to seal the crust before the sauce or toppings. And when you’re someplace like Lou Malnati’s, you depend on the cheese to be the foundation for the architecture on top. Good home-cooked sauce, fresh toppings—not just one or two like on the East Coast, but three, five, eight—however many you want!” He surfaced from his own menu with a happy expression, just as the waitress came to take the table’s orders. They ordered a trio of pizzas, a basket of fried pickles, and a calzone for Ray.

Frank leaned forward after the waitress had left, and shook his head slowly in mild contempt. “Pitiful. How far Chicago has strayed. You know that fucking casserole you guys eat back home has nothing to do with actual pizza?” He turned to his two bandmates. “Back me up, guys, amirite?”

Ray looked abashed, mumbling something about how everyone’s got a right to their own preference, while Mikey just grinned. He waggled his eyebrows at Pete, sliding his eyes in Frank’s direction as if to say, _watch this, now_.

“What even is that crust, to begin with. Butter? In pizza dough? You do know pizza comes from southern Italy, so olive oil is what they’ve always used. I mean. Crispy isn’t the goal, here, y’know? You’re not tryn’a make a focaccia, after all...” Frank paused for breath. “The whole point of pizza is that it’s street food, y’know? You can grab a slice and go, eat while walking or driving or whatever. You’ve gotta be able to fold the dough, the crust has gotta be pliable. And then you don’t even need plates, utensils, none of all the stuff you guys need when you attack one of your own pizzas. Jersey pizza is unpretentious. Low-maintenance. Easy!” Frank finished, looking smug.

Patrick meanwhile, looked a little more alert, less exhausted. Pete knew from their days touring in the van that Patrick drank in arguments the way other people consumed coffee. Cantankerous and opinionated as he was, arguing seemed to jolt him awake, give him a shot of energy that he thrived on. He looked Iero up and down, a small smile on his face. “Pshh. Street food indeed. I remember our guys eating Jersey pizza on the boardwalk in Asbury after we played the Stone Pony...yeah, it made a nice snack. But what the hell, dude. You eat the cheesy area and then end up left with this great dry crust that nobody wants—such a waste! And sure, it tided me over til we had a real dinner, but it wasn’t exactly anything I’d call a meal. Jersey pizza is a treehouse, a pup tent, while Chicago deep dish is a fucking mansion.” His expression was serious as he commented, “no matter how hungry you are, you can’t eat more than a couple slices of deep dish before filling up. Chicago pizza is what to get on a cold January night when your entire band is starving. Its something that keeps body and soul together.”

Frank rolled his eyes elaborately. “Jersey pizza is what you get with your band after a day playing on a summer stage, where all your senses are keyed up and you can enjoy real flavors in a summer twilight, listening to the ocean.”

Patrick landed his elbows on the table and leaned forward aggressively. “Are you saying Chicago pizza has _fake_ flavors?” His derision was thick, dripping from his voice, and Pete kind of loved it when Patrick got his back up in defense of their hometown.

“Naaah.” Frank waved his hand, dismissing Patrick’s incipient combustion with magnificent unconcern. “Not fake. Just _wrong_. Ham? Cheddar? Kielbasa? Please. Where’s the San Marzano tomatoes, the cremini ‘shrooms, the melanzana? Fuck, do you guys even know to use mozzarella di bufala? Have you even tasted a good sopressata, or crumbled up capicola on top of a pizza?” His voice, scratchy from cigarettes and a long day of screaming background vocals, took on a distinct cadence, the Italian-inflected vowels lilting.

Pete was surprised when Ray’s light voice interrupted Frank’s questions. “Now you’re just showing off, dude,” he said placidly. He grinned at his rhythm guitarist. “You know you’re just as happy getting a slice from that joint on Sloane near your mom’s in Trenton. Bagged shredded mozzarella and peppers from jars, man. Don’t even front.”

Frank looked deeply affronted at being called out by his fellow Jerseyan. He was about to reply when Patrick looked at him with dawning suspicion, saying, “Hey. And what the hell about the meat toppings, man. I thought you were supposed to be vegetarian?”

Frank was saved from answering immediately by the reappearance of the waitress with their drinks. She deposited sodas in front of each of them and paused a moment, looking from one side of the table to the other. Sensing clearly that she had interrupted a Great Debate (TM), she muttered that their pizza would be out in a moment—clearly making a token effort to defuse the antagonists, without having any real hope of success. Neither Patrick nor Frank looked up at this, although Ray took a moment to thank her.

Frank drew himself up with great dignity. “I am. But on behalf of my depraved carnivorous best friends, I know what the best meats are for a pizza and I know they come from New Jersey. Meat is still murder, though,” he added, grimly.

Patrick grinned, a feral baring of teeth. He settled his sweat-stained cap more firmly on his head and nodded. “Tasty, tasty, murder, yeah. And dude, don’t even think you can guilt me into giving up a good sausage-and-pepperoni combo. I lived in Andy Hurley’s back pocket basically all during our van years and if the vegan ninja couldn’t do it, you don’t have a hope in hell.”

Frank looked outraged. Pete was eighty percent certain that most of his fury was feigned for the sheer drama of it—but Iero _was_ about as Jersey as it’s possible to get. Warped was due to swing up the East Coast next, and when the tour passed through the Garden State, Pete didn’t want his lead singer’s body to turn up in the Meadowlands, wearing cement shoes. Pete would be heartbroken. He made the hurried decision to find something, anything, to distract Frank and Patrick.

As if sent by the angels, the waitress returned, one of her colleagues trailing behind her. The trays they bore were accompanied by the scent of garlic and cheese, and everyone at the table sat up and collectively inhaled the aromas as one. Ray looked lovingly at the enormous domed half-moon of his calzone, filled with salami, ham, spinach, and ricotta, curls of steam wafting from the tiny ornamental holes poked in the crust. Mikey immediately snagged the basket of pickles, crisp and hot in their fried batter, and picked the largest one out quickly, as if fearing one of the others would make off with it. And the pizzas, at last—a veggie supreme, a meat lovers combo and the special, all smelling divine—were set down with a clatter quick as can be.

There was a beat of silence.

“The fuck.” Frank sounded taken aback.

“Is this…Sicilian?” Patrick was nonplussed. “I didn’t order Sicilian pizza. Did you guys ask for this?” There was a flurry of shaken heads around the table; Pete used the pause to pass everyone a plate from the stack the waitress had left with them. He was about to grab the spatula that emerged, Excalibur-like, from the sauce-covered depths of the nearest pie, but Frank seized the nearest pan and drew it to him for closer inspection.

He tapped on the crusted edge. “Crunchy. Weirdly crunchy.” He gestured to Pete for the spatula, but Pete (having just managed to nab it before Frank) waved it tauntingly at him and proceeded to use it to extract a slice from the rectangular pan. He made the effort to serve Mikey a slice from the supreme, then handed the spatula to Patrick.

Patrick served himself a pepperoni/sausage slice, and cautiously broke off a chunk of the edge to taste. “They baked the cheese right into the dough?” He sounded uncertain. “But not like they’d do back home. And I don’t even see the pepperonis that are supposed to be here...” He looked at Pete beseechingly. Pete’s the words guy in their band. He could spell out Patrick’s puzzlement succinctly.

Pete took a glance at Patrick’s square of pizza, thick and architecturally solid, browned cheesy crust lining the edges like the kohl surrounding his own eyes. “Check it out, man. Looks like they squashed the pepperonis down into the base of the dough itself.” He prodded a finger at the base of Patrick’s slice, and Patrick slapped his hand away lightly, nose wrinkling. “Its still meant for you, ‘Trick,” said Pete comfortingly. “Look at the stripes of sauce along the top.” He gestured to the twin bands of tomato sauce that ran parallel to each other across the face of the pizza longways. “See? If they just added a row of pepperonis between the stripes, you’d have the Chicago flag, clear as anything!”

Patrick gazed from Pete to the surface of the odd pizza for a moment, before taking a bite. A slow smile spread across his face, and he sighed, relaxing a bit. “Dork.” He sounded affectionate, and relaxed. Yeah, I could kind of see that.” He attacked the rest of the slice with gusto, and added “And even if this thing looks weird, it tastes pretty damned good.” Whatever the rest of his sentence would have been was then lost as he nearly choked on an inhaled mouthful . Ray pounded him helpfully on the back as he attempted to cough a piece of cheese from his lungs, while Pete offered his soda to sip.

Frank’s hunger meanwhile also triumphed over his suspicion, and he had a slice of the veggie supreme in front of him. He picked a few of the green peppers off the surface to nibble on while he studied the crust. “Its a frico,” he said. He sounded sure.

“Say what now?” Pete asked. Frank looked at him thoughtfully.

“My nonna grew up in Friuli, even though she was born in Naples,” Frank explained. “When she came over here she brought over her recipes for crisping up thin layers of cheese...these guys made the crust into a frico.”

“Frank’s a foodie.” Mikey took a moment to lick sauce from his fingers, and Pete was briefly mesmerized by the motion. He tore his eyes from Mikey’s motions and struggled to listen to his words instead. “Dunno if he has to be because he’s always paying attention to vegetarian sources, or if it’s just because he’s such a nosy bastard, but he actually knows a fuckton more about good food than anyone I know. Even if he can’t cook for shit,” he finished slyly. He finished his slice and dove back into the pickles, nudging the basket towards Pete. Pete took the longest spear remaining. He closed his lips around it, trying (at least in his own mind) to be subtly enticing as he slid more of the pickle in.

Ray put his soda down suddenly and leaned forward, eyeing the closest pizza. “Um. Maybe then you can tell me what’s up with these things, man. ‘Lloyd’s Auto Parts?’” He pulled the other rectangular pizza trays closer to him, and studied something not on the food itself, but on the metal side of the pans instead. Patrick made a little unhappy noise until he could reach over and pull back the supreme within reach. He frowned at Ray, but motioned for him to continue.

“They all say it.” It was now Ray’s turn to look suspiciously at the pizzas. “Guys. I’ve worked on enough cars with my dad and brothers to know a drip pan when I see one. They sell these in automotive shops. They’re accessories for mechanics!”

Frank, who had plowed through his first slice and was making substantial headway on his second, paused and looked at Patrick. Patrick stared back, fork poised over his slice, and winced a little. “Why would you bake something using car parts?” Frank sounded honestly unhappy this time, less of the drama from his earlier showy argument and more real unease about whether he should continue eating. “What the hell kind of pizza place is this?”

Frank’s head abruptly rocked to the side a little, as he was cuffed lightly by the figure that appeared like magic beside their booth. “A Detroit-style pizza joint, that’s what,” said a gruff voice. It was Brian, MyChem’s manager. He was tiny as Patrick and had enough tattoos to rival Frank. According to Mikey he also worked miracles on the regular and was entirely terrifying, so magic may have just been the right word to describe him. “You’re in Buddy’s Rendezvous, and that’s the way it’s done here in the Motor City. Show some respect, you uncultured East Coast snob.”

Patrick smirked a little, as Frank made a show of rubbing his head where Brian got him. “Isn’t that kind of a contradictory insult?” he asked. Brian’s scowl was thunderous, but his voice was relatively mild.

“You know, I didn’t have to follow you guys here tonight. I was having a comfortable evening, I was. But I thought—‘how sad will Gerard be when he wakes up tomorrow and realizes his band is lost?’ He can’t perform with just a drummer, even if it is Bob. So here I am, pondering whether or not to tell you where the caravan went. Please, do continue to try my patience.”  
Pete’s head snapped up. “Went? They’re moving?”

Brian nodded. “The engines were fixed, and the buses had already made it twenty miles down the road when I left the group—no doubt they’re getting further each moment we’re here. I found my band, I’m ready to get back, and I’m pretty sure two stragglers from Fall Out Boy are surplus to requirements, here.” It was his turn to smirk. Just a little.

Patrick looked abashed. He opened his mouth, presumably to make things better, but Pete took no chances. He slapped a hand across his singer’s mouth, and put on his most winning smile. “But Mr. Schecter, Brian—can I call you Brian? We’re sorry, Patrick didn’t mean to smart mouth you.” He thought fast (it was hard to do when Patrick licked his palm aggressively, eww). “Please don’t make us find our way to Pittsburgh by ourselves. I’ve seen what goes down on _Is It Real_. We don’t want to take a wrong turn in Ohio and get eaten by the Cedar Bog Monster, I’m too pretty to die.”

Brian blinked, taken aback. Pete congratulated himself internally for disconcerting somebody who dealt with Gerard Way on a daily basis. Mikey, meanwhile, completely lost it. Snorting with giggles, he looked from his manager to Pete and back again. Letting his head fall on the table with a klonk and gasping for breath, he took a moment to compose himself before raising himself back up and slinging an arm around Pete’s shoulders. He beamed, the rare full Mikey-smile that emerged like sunshine from the clouds, and spoke in his best wheedling tone to his manager.

“C’mon, man. If we leave Pete and Patrick, I’ll be sad, Brian. And if I’m sad, then Gee will be too. You know you don’t want to deal with a mopey Gerard...” Brian looked wary at this, and Pete felt a little bad for the man, remembering the rumors of how MyChem’s near implosion and loss of their frontman were largely averted by Schecter’s efforts. Mikey continued. “And if you have Gerard sad, then he won’t wanna talk music, and that’ll make Ray sad.” Ray obligingly made his best sad-puppy eyes. Pete was impressed; even Ray’s curls drooped. “And Frank will lose his shit if his two heroes are sad. He’ll go crazy trying to cheer everyone up. And, well. Bob won’t stand for it, you know. He hates it when we mope. Or sulk. Or lose it. It irritates Bob, Brian. And nobody likes to see Bob irritated.” By this time Schecter had one hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose as if dealing with a headache. Mikey smugly brought his speech to a conclusion, “There’ll be bruises, Brian. Bloodshed. Possibly somebody’s early demise. You don’t want to have to spend the last third of Warped explaining to the cops where the bodies were dumped, do you?”

Brian’s hand had migrated to his temples, which he massaged with care. Evidence suggested his headache was growing. Pete overheard as Patrick quietly murmured, “What the hell, you’re supposed to be the quiet one...” to Mikey. Mikey’s lips quirked, and he simply waited.

“Don’t lecture me, Way. I hate being steamrolled.” Brian looked stern, but the corners of his mouth twitched. Pete sympathized; it was hard to resist a determined Mikeyway. “Three minutes. Whoever’s not out the parking lot by then can find their own way to Pennsylvania.” He punctuated his statement with a slap to the overstuffed banquette behind Frank’s head (the latter ducked) and turned, striding towards the door.

There was a frozen moment at the table.

Followed by an eruption of frantic movement. Patrick crammed nearly an entire slice into his mouth, Ray stood and looked wildly for the waitress and their check, Frank sprinted for the stack of empty pizza boxes behind the waitresses’ station, and Mikey stuffed the last of the pickles in his cheeks, chipmunk-like. Pete, well. He helped Patrick with the spatula when Frank returned with two pizza boxes, sliding the remaining slices into two boxes while Ray settled the bill with their server. He’s lost his appetite at the thought of having to wander down lonely Michigan highways and Ohio back roads, no supplies, in a vehicle that doesn’t belong to him, and responsible for Patrick not getting killed. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other, and was the first to have his wallet out when Ray asked everyone to chip in their share of the total.

“Move, move, move,” Frank chanted under his breath. He sealed the boxes and handed one to Pete.

“Ninety seconds,” Patrick said, glancing at his phone. Of course he’d keep track of their time left. The singer drained his soda swiftly and efficiently, paused to burp in business-like fashion, and resettled his trucker hat firmly. “Go, dude,” he motioned Pete to precede him.

They boiled into the parking lot, Ray yelling to Frank to slow down. Frank circled back to him, and Ray handed him the napkin-wrapped remains of his calzone, which Frank had not gathered into MyChem’s leftovers box. Slamming the box shut, he and the rest followed the sound of the idling engine to their left.

“The Jeep, the Jeep,” Mike repeated. Pete thought he meant they had to pile into the Cherokee that they all took to get here, but Mikey waved a lanky arm in the direction of a half-shadowed parking spot near the back of the lot. Pete looked, then stared again in admiration.

Brian was behind the wheel of a Jeep that quite possibly was older than Pete’s dad. The lovingly restored CJ-5 gleamed in the uncertain glow of the nearby street lights, painted a glossy burnt orange and thrumming with an obviously well-maintained engine. Frank and Ray made a beeline for Brian’s vehicle and swung themselves into empty seats. Brian lifted an eyebrow. “Coming, Way?”

Mikey, he smiled a lazy smile. “Not quite. I think I’ll alternate. These two get me for the first leg of the trip.” Here he jerked a thumb towards Pete and Patrick. “And when they start getting sick of me, I’ll switch back to you guys at the next rest stop.” Patrick smiled at this, looking pleased but a little bemused. Pete was happy, he never wanted his best friend to feel threatened or angry about the growing amount of time he devoted to Mikey. The fact that Patrick seemed to genuinely get along with MyChem’s bassist and his quiet humor left Pete terribly relieved.

Brian revved his engine. Pete grinned, and smacked Patrick smartly on the butt. “Pile in, Lunchbox. Bassists rule the front seats for this leg of the trip.”

Patrick opened his door, managing to glare at Pete all the while. “I’ll stay back here only if I control the music.”

Pete handed the pizza box back, so Patrick could rest it on the floor beside him. It was a fair bargain, he knew. Especially since if Patrick liked the music playing he would likely treat the other two to an impromptu serenade. “Deal,” he said.

Pete slung an arm around Mikey’s neck and planted a kiss at the corner of his mouth. Mikey turned his head and nosed along Pete’s jaw, only pulling back reluctantly to point out, “Brian’s actually exiting the lot, dude.”

Pete turned and saw Frank, waving from the back seat of the open Jeep. He saluted them with his middle fingers and grinned, wide and open from across the asphalt. Pete laughed, and hastened around to the driver’s side. Mikey was already in the shotgun seat, with Patrick tapping impatiently on the back of Pete’s headrest. He started the Cherokee’s engine with a flourish, and peeled across the lot after Brian, following him towards Pennsylvania and their next performance.

**Author's Note:**

> STG, I came up with this fic before Pizza Hut threw their Detroit-style out to the public. I just needed a setting where Patrick and Frank would be face-to-face debating, and then have something push *both* of them out of their comfort zones. 
> 
> And yes, I know Chicago does thin-crust and Trenton tomato pies have cheese as the base layer. Simplifying for narrative purposes!
> 
> Feedback gratefully accepted! Have a lovely day...


End file.
